The Balkan Peninsula Part 9

"Ah," he said sweetly, "he is a Greek. He will run away."

After that manner the Bulgarians always spoke of the Greeks. In this case the Bulgarian was possibly right. I finally coaxed permission to go forward, on condition that I took a patrol of one Bulgarian soldier, and I was allowed to borrow a rifle and some ammunition. We met no Bashi-Bazouks: but whilst the Bulgarian palpably was quite content to enter into a plan to give the Bashi-Bazouks a chance of showing themselves at nightfall, the Greek liked the adventure not at all.

(Perhaps on the whole he was justified. But I was desperately eager for a "story," and with the Turkish regulars running away so consistently, to encounter irregulars suggested no real danger.)

On that journey, at a little village which I cannot name between Silivri and Chatalja, the population was largely Greek. Some of the Greeks, after the Turks had fled before the Bulgarians, had discarded the fez and were wearing Bulgarian caps. Others held to the fez, but had marked on it with white chalk a cross. I formed the opinion that if by the fortune of war the Turks came back, those crosses would be rubbed out.

The Greek can be very pliant undoubtedly, when he is in contact with a dominant people. The other side to his character--that of a hot-headed, argumentative, boisterous Donnybrook Fair patriotism--is developed in his own country where it is fed with memories of the historic greatness of his race.

The Roumanian--the fourth national type in the Balkans to which I shall refer--very closely resembles the Greek in most respects. Like the Greeks the Roumanians are subtle, flexible, engaging. They are a singularly good-looking race, and Roumanian girls are sought after in marriage a great deal. A Serbian politician explaining to me what he called "a nice national balance," pointed out that the Serbians rather despised trade and finance. The Roumanian, therefore, came into Serbia to make money as shopkeeper and financier. Then the young Serbian man married the rich Roumanian's daughter and thus the Serbian money was still kept in the country.

The instinct for trade has a very marked effect on the politics of the Balkans. The Serbian has no love for trade: the Montenegrin despises it quite. The Greek and the Roumanian are very keen traders with an inclination to escape from manual work as soon as they can. The Bulgarian is a trader and also fond of productive industry. So "as two of a trade never agree," neither Greek nor Roumanian can get on as well with the Bulgarian as with the Serbian.

The Roumanian national polity differs greatly from the Greek, though the two racial types are very similar. Whilst Greece has a stormy and disorderly democracy, Roumania is ruled practically by an oligarchy--an oligarchy which during the past twelve months has won to an achievement which would have delighted the old Florentine Republic. Without losing a soldier, almost without spending a crown, Roumania has won a great tract of territory and established herself as the paramount power of the Balkans. It was a victory of unscrupulous and patient resoluteness which is a cla.s.sic of its kind, and it was made possible by the oligarchic system of Roumania. The Montenegrin does not need to be considered separately: he is the "Highlander" of the Serbian and shares Serbian language, customs, and character with such modifications as the conditions of his mountain life impose. But the Albanian, the largely Mohammedan mountain type to which the jealousies of Europe have agreed to give a separate nationality and a separate kingdom, calls for some attention. The Albanian is the wildest of the Balkan types, and his country the most primitive. It has had no period of civilisation, and can hardly be said to promise to have. Its existence as a nation in 1914 was due to the fact that the German Powers wished to have a footing in the Balkans for intrigue. "The creation of Albania dealt a death-blow to the Balkan League," said a cynical Austrian diplomatist recently. He was right: and the creation of Albania undertaken at the instance of Austria had no other purpose from the first, though it was disguised under the plea of anxiety for the national rights of the Albanians, wild catamarans of the hills, odd specimens of whom one may encounter in many parts of the Balkans acting as dragomans. The Albanian has many savage virtues. He is a picturesque fellow as he swaggers about with a silver-decorated armoury stuck in his waist-belt: and he is truly faithful to a master. But he has not the barest elements of a national organisation; and the Austrian Prince of Albania did not find a single house within all his dominion which would satisfy the housing needs of a respectable London clerk.

Describing the march across Albania to the Adriatic coast during the recent war a Serbian officer wrote:

It is only by travelling as we did that real facts can be learned.

We who had only known the Turks by hearsay had a certain respect for them. At present I feel but contempt and disgust. To think that they should have held these lands for five hundred years, and kept them absolutely wild and uncultivated! Prishtina, Jakovitsa, and Prizrend are in every respect behind Mirigevo [a village some miles outside Belgrade]. There are neither bridges nor roads, nor decent dwellings to be met with in the Sanjak. Of the dirt I cannot trust myself to speak. The "Ujumat" (Prefecture) of Prizrend, residence of the Mutessarif, is in such a filthy condition that I could not sit there for more than five minutes together. All around the sofras (tables) were rags, remnants of food, tufts of dogs'

hair, etc., for these ate and slept with their masters....

The people are humble, cowed, moving out-of-doors rarely, and then huddled together like a herd of cattle.... The peasants run to kiss our hands, and bow down to the ground, but they are too frightened to give a sensible answer to a plain question. They speak Serbian, it is true, and cross themselves as Christians, but otherwise bear little resemblance to our peasant folk. They have lived no better than their masters, for themselves and their pigs share the same apartment! If the pigs were let loose the Turks were sure to kill them, so they were hidden indoors. The first use they made of the liberty we gave them was to hunt the pigs into the open air, and how the poor beasts enjoyed it! One could not help laughing at their antics as they chased each other, while the children ran to keep them from escaping to the woods. But the cows and oxen defy description. They are like our calves, only the shape is queer. I saw no vegetables anywhere. The staple diet is maize. From our frontier to the sea it is the same tale of misery, helplessness, and dirt. In Prizrend, after every rainfall, the people drink muddy water in which none of our soldiers would care to wash. When we boiled it a thick sc.u.m came on the top, which we skimmed off! This is the water used by a town of 40,000 citizens; and really one felt that authorities like the Turks should not be allowed to live any longer. Now we feel that it is a disgrace to us to have delayed so long in coming to the deliverance of our brothers in bondage just outside our doors. Better late than never.

As for the independence of Albania, it would be a comical, if it were not a sinister, idea. Whoever speaks of a national sense in these savage hordes is either untruthful or ignorant. The Serbians of this region make no distinction, as we do, between the Turks and the Mohammedan Albanians. I could not get them to understand that the latter were in reality brethren of the Christian Albanians with whom they live in amity. I pointed out that these Mohammedans could not speak a word of Turkish, but that did not help. The Serbians insist that they are Turks all the same. And for all practical purposes they are right. The Christian Albanians are called by their race brethren "Catholics," and are hated and persecuted by them just as the Serbians are hated and persecuted. The "Catholics"

loathe the Mohammedans and deny that they are of the same nationality. But the fact remains that they speak the same language. The Catholics welcomed us with joy, rendered us every possible service, and often refused to accept payment. They are eager to a.s.sist in our operations, acted as scouts for us, and brought us precious information. Sometimes they acted on their own initiative, captured, and killed their Mohammedan co-nationalists without first consulting us.... The priests are the most embittered. These jealous "fratres" told us they longed for a Christian Government, and that the project of a united Albania was insensate.... Ismail Kemal's proclamation has irritated the priests about here. They will not for a moment consider a union with the Mohammedan tribes or submission to a Moslem leader like Ismail. On the other hand, if we evacuate this country, a terrible fate awaits the Catholics....

Here I have made acquaintance with the Montenegrin troops, rather different from ours! They get leave to go home and see after their wives and children whenever they ask it, and lax discipline does not seem to affect their heroism. They fight like lions, but do nothing else except shoot birds and fish in the interval. Every ship that touches here is greeted with a volley, though ammunition is sometimes scarce, but the Montenegrin can better spare bread than shot. He will do nothing but fight, and ships often remain unladen here for days, because there are few Albanians in the place to do the work. My soldiers carry sacks and burdens of all kinds to and from the ships, and the Montenegrins laugh at them and say: "Is that how you fight, Brother Shumadinats?" [Shumadia is a forest in the centre of the Kingdom of Serbia.] They are amused to see our men one day unshaven; they are most particular themselves to shave each day whatever happens. The priests alone wear a beard, for they are not supposed to fight.... The Montenegrin soldiers' wives come once a week to look after their husbands, wash the linen, and help to clean up....

There is, of course, a certain amount of Serb intolerance in that letter, but it represents on the whole the truth.

So much for the different nations of the Balkans. The personalities of the Peninsula might provide a happy solution for the problems which the conflict of these mutually antipathetic racial elements create: for there is no fact more clear than that the general interest of the countries could best be served by a wise policy of compromise and co-operation, bringing its different elements together as the Swiss were brought together by a geographical rather than a racial reason. But unfortunately there are no personalities alike honest in outlook and great in power.

Four able and far-seeing men I have met in the Balkans: M. Nikolitch, President of the Serbian Parliament; General Demetrieff, Commander of the Third Army (which won the most notable Bulgarian victories), now commanding a Russian army; M. Venizuelos, Prime Minister of Greece; M.

Take Jonescu, of the Roumanian Cabinet. All men of power, none seemingly has sufficient strength to impose his will not alone on his own country, but on the other Balkan States, and weld them into a Confederation which would be held together by a sense of common interests and common dangers.

King Ferdinand of Bulgaria has kept for years the centre of the Balkan stage to the European onlooker; and is still a great enough figure to give pause to those Bulgarian Nationalists who would exact from him reprisal for the terrible misfortunes of their country. But he is a man of audacity rather than of courage, and his ambition has been always more personal than national--to be Czar of the Balkans rather than to be the maker of a Balkan nation. Gifted with a great deal of diplomatic ability and with a soaring imagination, King Ferdinand has a serious obstacle in his personal timidity. To play a gambler's game one must be prepared at times to take the great risk. But King Ferdinand has many fears. He fears, for instance, infectious diseases morbidly, and the thought of a germ in the track could turn him from the highest of enterprises. Perhaps it was the fear of disease rather than of wounds that kept him so much in the rear of his army during the 1912 campaign against Turkey. But whatever the cause, his absence from the front showed a serious weakness of character in a man who aspired to carve out an empire for himself. The Bulgarian authorities, deceiving the Press almost as a.s.siduously for the purpose as for the false representation that all the destruction of the Turkish forces was ascribable to the Bulgarian arms, gave to Europe inspiriting pictures of His Majesty following close on the heels of his soldiers in a military train which served him as a palace. The fact was that the ambitious but timid king kept very well to the rear, at Stara Zagora first and afterwards at Kirk Kilisse, with a great entourage of secret police. And when armistice negotiations were in progress he kept separate from his Cabinet as well as from his army. Affable in manner, industrious, pertinacious, well aware of the advantage of advertis.e.m.e.nt (my first meeting with His Majesty was due to the fact that he mistook my map case for a camera, and sent for me to photograph him while he stood on the bridge over the Maritza at Mustapha Pasha), of high ability, King Ferdinand did great things for his adopted country, but showed a fatal weakness of character when he had drunk deep of the wine of success. It is the fashion to blame him wholly now for the wild attack on Serbia and Greece. He may have been in part the victim of his advisers' folly in that. But without much doubt he could have vetoed the fatal move, if he had known his army from personal observation, if he had been down to the lines at Chatalja, and had looked closely into the besieging forces around Adrianople.

Common sense would have told him that the attack on his allies was hopeless, if strength of character had not told him that it was wicked.

But he neither knew the facts nor understood the ethics of the position.

General Demetrieff, Commander of the Third Bulgarian Army, the victor of Kirk Kilisse and of Lule Burgas, the reluctant attacker at Chatalja, impressed me as a man of fine character. For some few days I was a member of the officers' mess at Erminekioi, which was the headquarters of the Staff before the lines of Chatalja, and had the chance of seeing much of the general. He struck one as a frank, courageous man. He answered questions truthfully or not at all, and was notably kind to the very small group of correspondents who had got through to the front. His personal staff worshipped him, and told with pride that most of the staff work with him on the battle-field was under fire. When it was clear that the attack at Chatalja had failed, General Demetrieff neither attempted to tell falsehoods nor shut himself off from visitors. He ascribed the cessation of the attack to the outbreak of cholera in the Bulgarian lines (and the statement was probably in his mind not only the truth but all the truth: in any case one could not expect him to disclose the shortage of big gun ammunition): was avowedly disconsolate but not in the least discouraged. I cannot imagine General Demetrieff having any hand in the making of the second Balkan war against the Serbians and Greeks, and think that the Bulgarians had in him a man of honesty and courage as well as of great military skill. No other general of the Bulgarian Army impressed me in the same way, certainly not General Savoff.

Of the Bulgarian politicians, M. Gueshoff, Prime Minister at the outbreak of the first war, and M. Daneff, chief Bulgarian delegate at the Peace Conference and Prime Minister at the outbreak of the second war, had the chief parts in the glories and tragedies of 1912-13. M.

Gueshoff seemed a well-meaning but weak man. He was fond of insisting upon his English education and of advancing that as a proof of his complete candour. I imagine that he played no directing part in the drama of his country's sudden rise to power and more sudden fall, but did just as his king directed, sometimes probably under protest. M.

Daneff was a more virile man, and his force of character, with little guidance from experience, of liberal education, or from wise purpose, had much to do with the downfall of Bulgaria. Of the Balkan Peace Conference which met first in London in December 1912, M. Daneff attempted from the outset to be dictator. He never lost a chance of being rude to an opponent or fulsome to a supporter. He diplomatised by p.r.o.nunciamento and made a vigorous use of the minor newspaper Press with the idea of overawing the chancelleries of Europe. I am sure that the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, had nearly as much amus.e.m.e.nt as chagrin from the incidents of the Conference. Just when the Turkish delegates were being gently coaxed up to drink the hemlock, Bulgaria would publicly dance a wild triumph of joy, and announce that the very last drop had to be absorbed or Bulgaria would not be satisfied. When the Turkish delegates were thus startled away and all the pressure of European diplomacy was being brought to bear upon the Turkish Government to bring them back to the point, Bulgaria threatened publicly to break up the Conference and resume the war. Europe was given a short time-limit in which to act.

M. Venizuelos, Prime Minister of Greece, has proved in his own country a great capacity for good government and wise diplomacy. There was a strong movement made at the outset of the Balkan Peace Conference to have him appointed head of the Balkan delegation. Success in that would have made the chances of peace better; and probably he had an expectation of being chosen as being the senior in official rank of all those present. But the jealousy and distrust of Greece was great: and M.

Venizuelos did not prove himself the man of genius who could overcome the handicap which his nationality imposed. True, the task was almost impossible. But still nearer to the impossible would it be now to unite again the warring factions in the Balkans. M. Venizuelos, of the highest talent though he be, will not be the maker of a Balkan Confederation.

M. Nikolitch, President of the Serbian Parliament, is an amiable and clever man with far more culture than is usual in the Balkans. He has translated English cla.s.sics into the Serbian tongue, and is an industrious student of social and political philosophy. But he has nothing of the brute force that is needed to control the warring pa.s.sions of the Balkan States. As the Minister of a Balkan Union to a great Power he would be admirable, for he has tact and wit, and a knowledge of the value of truth. When it was made plain that Austria was to have her way and Serbia no territory on the Adriatic, the disappointment of Serbia was bitter: and there was some special blame of Great Britain that she "had not considered her obvious interests," and brought this friendly little state to the sea. M. Nikolitch had the diplomat's faculty of taking a defeat smilingly. "The most unhappy thing about it," he said to me, "is that now Serbia will not have England on her frontier." It was a neat touch to speak of the sea as British territory.

There remains to be considered M. Take Jonescu, who is credited with the chief share in the unscrupulous diplomacy which has made Roumania for the while paramount in the Balkans. It was certainly a masterpiece of Machiavellianism, applying the tenets of "The Prince" with cold precision, and marks its author as the master mind of the Balkans to-day. Give such a man a good soldier people to follow him and an honest purpose, and a Balkan Confederation might be achieved, with some further blood-letting perhaps. But it is not possible to believe that the Roumanians, frivolous, pleasure-loving, untenacious, could impose their will for long upon the coa.r.s.er-fibred but more virile Slavs of the Peninsula.

No, there is not a personality in the Balkans to-day at once forceful enough, honest enough, and skilful enough to give the Peninsula a union which would enable it by means of a bold decision now to ensure internal peace and freedom from outside interference. A great man could build up a greater Switzerland, perhaps, of the Slavs, the Greeks, and the Roumanians in the Balkan Peninsula with Great Britain, Russia, and France as joint sponsors for the freedom of the new Federation. But one hardly dares to hope for such a happy ending to the long miserable story of the Balkans.